New Clients Welcome…Online Dating Tips Found Here.

Now just wait, – this post isn’t exactly what you think it is. (Well, alright) – maybe it is a little. What started a couple of months ago as a joke in passing at the office on all the free advice I was offering to girlfriends by a proverbial water-cooler, launched into quite the lucrative side-business where doling out “free advice” reached its tipping point (pun intended).

The result: My very own tip jar, parked for all to see, similar to those championed by Baristas appreciative of your loose change at the local Starbucks.

Not that I’m the Jedi Master of online dating, but it did in fact turn out that I’d earned quite the “blackbelt” in navigating the Tom Foolery that’s inherent within the online stratosphere of “virtual” communications and courtships.

How you ask?

Well, in its infancy back in 2007, I referred to myself as a grassroots anthropologist, engaging in simple research and conducting an anthropological study of the mating rituals within online virtual communities otherwise known as “chat rooms.” I’d just been hired as the executive director of Pop + Politics, a multi-person blog and a journalism training institute funded by the Knight Foundation, operating at San Francisco State University and the University of Southern California. My mission, to reach and showcase the 18-29 year old demographic’s interest in the upcoming Presidential Election using online media. (My personal mission – navigating MySpace and Facebook to find out what all the fuss was about.)